TAMPA – Hurricane Helene forced employees at Playtime Learning Academy in Tampa to tear out and toss everything on the first floor.
“It was pretty shocking,” Director Christina Godette said. “There was about three feet of water outside the entire building and then about six inches of water inside. So, just opening that door, water was gushing out. It was pretty heartbreaking. There was a lot of damage,” she said.
Dig deeper:
Several months later, Jessica Henson of Adorn Murals drove by.
“I got the red light and I looked over, and it was a big white building at the time and I thought, ‘ah, that’s a great canvas,’” Henson said. “So, I just called them. Christina, the director here, answered the phone.”
“I said, ‘can I ask you a question?’ She said, ‘sure,’ and I said, ‘have you ever thought about a mural for your building?’ And she said, ‘many times,’ and I’m like, ‘well, that’s an answer I love.’ So, long story short, we ended up meeting the next morning,” Henson said.
Henson learned about the damage to the building. She recently helped launch the nonprofit Adorn the Bay after last year’s hurricanes.
“I just immediately thought, ‘how do I help,’” Henson said.
“The goal behind it is to provide free murals to businesses, nonprofits and municipal areas to help not only brighten the area, but to drive traffic, and not just any artists, we’re bringing in some of the best mural artists in the nation,” Henson said.
“Our mission is simple, it’s to bring beauty and hope back to the hurricane-affected communities of Tampa Bay while employing displaced artists,” she said.
She decided Playtime Learning would be the nonprofit’s first mural.
“It’s so nice to come in and see that and just see that we went through something that was, you know, devastating as a community, and then now we came on top, and we’re brighter, and we just have this beautiful mural to just kind of show that resilience,” Godette said. “It also just represents the inside of our school too, because the beauty is inside our school and now that’s reflected on the outside too,” she said.
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What’s next:
The artists they’re looking to hire and pay full price for, Henson said, are those who’ve been impacted by natural disasters.
“The second part of it is to bring in professional mural artists from California, North Carolina, Florida, anywhere that’s had a natural disaster, and they’ve been impacted,” she said.
“How cool would that be to take the artist out of California, Annie, who lost her home in the Palisades fire, and have her come to Florida on this amazing trip and mural for a fire department,” Henson said.
Henson said Dunedin Fire Rescue has reached out about a mural.
Along with the mural, Lou Phillips Painting did the commercial job and painted the front of Playtime Learning Academy. Sunbelt rentals also donated the lift, Henson said.
What you can do:
You can go to Adorn Murals’ website to apply for a mural or to help sponsor one.
The Source: FOX 13’s Kailey Tracy talked with Jessican Henson, co-founder of Adorn the Bay, and Christina Godette, Director of Playtime Learning Academy, for this story.
